J E F F Ly N N E

MIX INTERVIEW J E F F LY N N E Photo: Photo: Matt Hurwitz S T R A N G E M A G I C BY MATT HURWITZ Following the breakup of ELO in 1986, Lynne leased a second, Long Wave, a tribute to the clas-sics turned heavily to producing other artists, including he heard on the BBC on his father’s long-wave radio Since his introduction to the recording stu-dio George Harrison, Dave Edmunds, Paul McCartney, in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Released the same day in the late 1960s, Jeff Lynne has proven himself a Ringo Starr, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and a band was Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light continual innovator. With the formation of Electric listed at the top of his recording heroes, The Beatles Orchestra, for which Lynne has taken a sec-ond pass Light Orchestra (Lynne, Roy Wood, Bev Bevan) in themselves, for whom he produced the group’s An- at some of ELO’s biggest hits. 1970, he introduced the in-clusion of orchestral string players as permanent members of the band, thology reunion tracks, “Free As a Bird” and “Real Recording of the two albums took place at adding a new layer to the pop soundscape. Soon Love” in 1994-95. He was also, of course, a member Lynne’s Los Angeles home, where he has lived these after, the move to Giorgio Moroder’s Musicland and co-producer of The Traveling Wilburys, with past 17 years overlooking L.A. and on a good day studio and collaboration with engineer Reinhold Harrison, Petty, Orbison and Dylan, releasing two gaining a view of Catalina. The space has a warm Mack in the mid-’70s cul-minated in what many acclaimed discs in 1988 and 1991. tone with wood-paneled rooms, and Lynne might consider Lynne’s crowning achievement in recording, ELO’s 1977 double-LP Lynne released one solo album, Armchair The- plug in anywhere. As Joe Walsh, one of Lynne’s release, Out of the Blue. ater in 1990, and 22 years later, on October 9, re- most recent collaborators [see Mix August 50 M I X | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 2 | mixonline.com MIX INTERVIEW 2012], says in a new documentary (Mr. Blue Sky: was on my own. I always record by myself, which I The Story of Jeff Lynne and ELO), “Every room in love. I love playing every instrument—that’s my that house is a recording room.” favorite thing, just making a whole, big landscape of The control room still reflects Lynne’s analog racket, with me doing it all. If we’d record every- roots, with a classic 40-channel British Raindirk thing live, at once, I could never get the separation I Symphony LN1 console, a load of EQ modules wanted, and I could never concentrate enough on the rescued from his previous Raindirk Series 3 desk, bits that were really important. When you get those AMS DMX 15-80, S-DMX and RMX-16 digital bits done early on, and they’re tight and just right, it’s de-lays, API 550 and Massenburg 8200 EQ units, much nicer to play to, to add all the gui-tars, pianos, API 512b and Brent Averill 1073 and 1272 mic keyboards and the harmonies. Once it’s solid, it’s just preamps, and plenty of UREI 1176 limiters. Lynne that much more fun to play. and en-gineer Steve Jay, with whom he has Walk us through how you build a track. collaborated for the past five years, record to Pro Tools and mix through the Raindirk, monitoring I’ll start with a click track, which I’ll play to with a hi-hat for about 20 through Yama-ha MSP-10s or Event Opals, as seconds, recording a really good groove. Then I’ll use the click to build up the well as larger ATC SCM100 speakers. tracks. I’ll put the snare on, and Lynne records guitars and vocals in a half-office/half-studio space next to then tom-tom fills and snare fills. I can play a full rhythm track—I’ve been the control room and drums in an extra room filled with spare CDs, box sets drumming since I was 13; I play on a Gretsch kit now that I got during the and 7-inch vinyl. A very large wood-paneled, high-ceilinged room Wil-burys sessions—but not necessarily great. So I prefer to build it up, with downstairs, looking much like the interior of a warm hunter’s lodge (and lots of assistance from Steve and the computer, and just layer it. formerly used to store pinball machines by the previous owner), is used for Nearly all the time now, I’ll also use a big fat bass drum—a 28-inch Ludwig recording piano and string and choir sections, among other things. from 1941 that belongs to Steve. You can cut the room decay down to differ-ent For Mix, Lynne reveals his current recording process, as well as that of his lengths. So on some really slow songs, you can have it quite long. Or if it’s a fast pioneering work with ELO, some techniques of which remain in his massive song, like “Beyond the Sea” on Long Wave, you gotta pull it in a bit, because bag of recording tricks. otherwise, it’s just one big BOOMBOOM-BOOMBOOM. After the bass drum is in place, I’ll put the bass on, real punchy, dead on, on the note. Then I’ll put the You’ve had personal recording studios for years. When was your first? guitar rhythm. From there, I have a foundation to work from. [Points to a Bang & Olufson Beocord 2000 Deluxe reel-to-reel machine in the control room]. That’s my original studio. I got it in 1968. I had a Mellotron in One of the hallmarks of any great Jeff Lynne recording is the drum the front room of my mom and dad’s house, and I had that set up, with a sound. How do you create that? record player right next to it in this big cabinet. It’s a 2-track “sound on There’s a certain sound that I can hear in my head that I can usually create, sound” machine. So you would record on the left track, and then record a mix de-pending on the room we’re in. I can always get it in here because Steve of that along with, say, a second guitar, onto the right track, and just keep knows how to get me the old-fashioned drum sound that I love in that room— bounc-ing, adding a vocal or a bass drum. Sometimes I’d bounce 20 times— a little bit of room on it, and plenty of separation. But a big part of it is I move you’d see through the f***ing tape! It was like Scotch tape in the end. And I the overheads out about 10 feet. I don’t like close-up mics. I don’t like the could do the best phasing on Earth. clicki-ness of them. I especially don’t like a mic under the snare, that little Shure—I hate that sound. It doesn’t even sound like a drum. What did you learn from using it? This sound really goes back to even the earliest ELO days. I learned to experiment. I learned about having sounds together, seeing what piano sounded like with the guitar and how to include the Mellotron. One of the things I do comes from the fact that I couldn’t get enough separation when I would record Bev’s drums. So I used to get him to double-track What do you like about the rooms you use here for recording? the snare drum and some of the tom-toms in a room, on their own. So you’d Everything’s made of wood. The big room downstairs has just the right pick up that, along with just the room sound of those drums, which you can amount of bounce—very soft, not trashy, like a big room can be. The other then turn up separately in the mix of the kit. It was a much better sound, be- room, where I record guitars mainly, has just that perfect ratio of room and cause the room sound of those drums doesn’t bleed onto the bass drum and guitar, like the old BB King kind of blues sound. Dry, but slightly wet. No everything else. I did that from Day One—4-track the snare drum and the reverb. I never use any reverb. And my drum room, which is like a storage tom-tom. That is the drum sound, really. That’s all it is. cupboard—I have some great fun recording in here. You’ll see, I’ve got tielines in each room that lead back to the control room, so there’s no cables On Mr. Blue Sky, you match the signature running down the halls. sound of “Don’t Bring Me Down” perfectly. That’s basically a snare that’s just crushed to death by a UREI [1176]. That’s On the two new albums, you play everything yourself. Do you miss as flat as I could have it without it blowing up or becoming a fuzz box. That’s having a band of guys around to play with? how I did it in the first place, and I did the same method on the new version.

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